Sound “Palettes”: organization?

Question

Hello everyone :). Inspired from the way painters,am, paint (haha), what is your favorite way of using your palette(s)? I mean, painters have their colors right to their sides, where they see them and pick them on and so on, so I wondered how some of you organize your sounds so that it is comfortable for you to use them in a session.

This is more a question about organization, 'cause I guess someone might want to post saying that they have their sound palette in their heads, which I am not denying, but I refer to how it looks. Do you just go on and search for the sounds every time?

Lets say you have a battle field scene, I guess you are pretty certain that you will use a lot of similar samples, so would you import many of those and place them in a separate track that would be practically your "palette"? do you leave it in sound miner or so?

I do the track thing, I place many of the sounds which I might use so that I don't have to constantly import them, but it sometimes gets a little bit messy.

Thank you SSD

Answer 1

For me, I grab as I need, because I usually never know what exact sounds I need until I get to that specific edit, where I sometimes start with my go-to 'selects' and from there try some thing on the wall and see what sticks, sometimes going back for more elements. For me it's a process of discovery and exploration with each edit.

However, many times I'll run across something $$ not for what I'm working on, but for something else I know that needs to be cut later - so I'll snag the sound, drop it in the general location of where it's going to edited, and mute the region. If it's a $$ sounds but I don't quite know where I want to use it yet, aside from knowing I want to use it, I'll drop it in the dead space between reel breaks.

Answer 2

Very interesting question! From way back to my beginnings in music production to my current work in TV/film, I have always found the creative process easier if I had my "palette" already prepared with an armory of relevant sounds ready to be used before I attack any arrangement. I find nothing more frustrating than searching for "that perfect fx" whilst in the middle of a creative flow. When you pre-prepare your material things seem to flow more easily.

However, on the flip side, I've also had some of my best results when I've been forced think a little bit outside of the box and come up with something different on the spur of the moment. I'm not gonna lie and pretend I'm some kind of creative genius. Most often the good results of these kind of moments occur by complete accident. But accident or not, the result is often very pleasing. I really believe that spontaneity can be a great creative tool and can genuinely make the difference between a good piece of work and a great piece of work!

Answer 3

Use folders.

Prior to working on anything, gather the sounds that you already have (paying attention to what you think you'll need/use and what fits the style that you have in mind) and copy them to folders that contain sounds for particular uses or scenes. When you start working, use these folders for the sounds, thus your choices are already limited and you won't have to continuously search through large amounts of sound files repeatedly. Plus, you'll know when you're missing something.

Also in terms of file searching and organization, have a look at this: http://www.tsugi-studio.com/?page_id=635

Answer 4

i tend to want a lot of options available, for comparison etc... so aside from my editing tracks and stems i tend to also use seperate library tracks in my main work super-session, and i dedicate a track to each library category of whatever i am working on....

library tracks also get used for bulk importing, and organisation eg when i returned from Samoa with eg 70 ambience quad recordings, they all went on to a set of library tracks... easy to skip thru, locate etc....

whatever process or setup you use, the main goal is that it makes it easy to find things, and sometimes that is about memory - do you remember where you stashed that particular sound?

by using library tracks it means you can also colour code files on the tracks, and use markers to locate or tag material

if i am working on a 6 reel film, the first file on a library track is at 07.00.00.00

having library tracks also means you can easily transfer them into another session... and ignore them when conforming, and reimport to conformed sess if/when necessary...